Natureoflanguage
The Nature of Language
The Nature of LanguageThere are many possible theoretical positions about the nature of language. Here are three different views which explicitly or implicity are reflected in current approaches to language learning . The structural view of language , The communicative view of language and The interactional view of language.The structural view of language is that language is a system of structually related elements for the transmission of meaning. These elements are usally descibed as phonological units (phonemes)grammatical units (phrases, clauses, sentences)grammatical operations (adding, shifting, joining or transforming elements)lexical items (function words and structure words)The communicative, or functional view of language is the view that language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. The semantic and communicative dimensions of language are more emphasized than the grammatical characteristics, although these are also included.The interactional view of language sees language primarily as the means for establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships and for performing social transactions between individualsFrom the mentioned views ,it is undenied that it is a complex view .however ,l think the three level was followed if you want to understand the nature of langue .firstly ,the language was original from the biological and physical body of human beings.we need study the structure of organism .of course ,many critics think that the animals and baby can’t produce the langue ,may be they transmit emotion and information by means of the instincts or signals.l guess that animals share their own language ,only do they not admit that .secondly ,the nature of language refers to the use of languge in which we can obsverve whatever we do and say ,we never escape from the language system . language can express our feeling ,emotions ,and our behaviors .sometimes even if you are no voice to say something ,you must form ideas in you mind with your mind .usually ,l think why the same languge was said by people in all over theworld .what is the reason ? . To an essential extent,the living enviroments or terrains play vital role .it inflence the body structure of human beings in order to make great differnces to the formation of language .that are my point of view of explaining the nature of language .SubjectivitySubjective is opposite to objective . As a matter of the fact ,we know the objective is a dream,which people has been looking for .when we refers to the language we know ,what we said –language is subjective .But sometimes we don’t regard the subjectivity as subjective . Regardless it is known that the language is the instructment of communication . now comparison with the tool –pen invented by human being . they use it to write something and produced it with plastic or wood .However ,the language is invented by human beings .Therefore ,it is totally agreed that the language is biologically invented in the process of development of human beings .Moreover ,when Helen keller lose the sight ,still she can express her thinking with language .so we can see that speaking and listening is the exterior form while the language exsists intreior .Generally judging ,the lanuage makes man subjectivity .in a general way ,whoever you are ,whichever language you use .Only can you use “I”to talk .human beings must construct themselves as subjective with language .this ability was looked as the subjectivity ,why we become subjective ? because we use the language .in a word the use of “I”make us subjectivity.Thinkingwhat is thinking ,it is simply answered if you never come to the detailed . Deeply ,thinking is a complex question which people are exploring it when the human beings were able to speak . In the English class ,the teacher told us “please thinking with english”, why we need think something in language ? Виссарионович Сталинsaid “the language is the outer covering of thinking ”. obviously ,it symbolize the tendency of that period which indecated thinking must denpend on language . But chilren have no voice and language to express her ideas . Can they think about something ?Therefore , it is not absolute to define the relation between the thinking and language . l think the thinking is a part of our physical and biological mature .Thus lingustics claimed that thinking is language use (adult with langage). Totally , the thinking is a abstract definition . Different thinking leads to different forms of life , taking china and western country for example ,we are human beings but we are en circled different cultures ,life styles ,and values . Certainly ,the thinking is diversity in different culture . may be it is original from the use of different language .Understanding of Language gameWittgenstein attempts to expand the language and the process by which it is acquired, bringing in the idea of a "language game," which he defines as "the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven" A language game is very similar to any other game that a child uses to learn his or her native language—one such language game might be of an adult naming objects and the child repeating them, though there are many others. He then introduces more words into the simple language of orders, such as numerals, ‘this,’ ‘there,’ alphabetical letters, and colors. The language games are what give children common meanings of terms and allow for new terms to come into existence. It is within this that the public meaning is contained. However, assimilating the words in such a way does not make their uses any more alike one another. One problem with this that Wittgenstein fails to note is that for the latter form to work, the physical object must be present, otherwise a definition must be given as to what the object itself actually signifies, and that definition will have no meaning unless it is able to signify the wordsin the definition with some particular object. Thus, as he points out, when it is said that every word in language signifies something, nothing has been said, unless a specific distinction has been made . His argument then proceeds to examine the grouping of different words together, and the subjectiveness of doing so. It is possible to say that there are different kinds of words, and that often it is the function of such words that are more alike than the actual terms. This again reveals the social context in which meanings are found—it is not a fixed process, but one that is constantly changing and molding to the culture around it. How words are grouped will stem from the social meanings that are put upon them; this in turn will determine their classification—it was only due to the inclinations of those using the words that their meaning was given and the groupings were formed.Meaning as useWhen the speaker say something ,the hearer must understand the apeaker .it is necessary to know the meaning from the speaker ,so the hearer can answer to the speaker .in general , understanding is meaning which come from the use of language and interaction . Ludwig Wittgenstein conclude that his idea of "language-games" are actually the driving force behind the acquisition of language. In other words, Wittgenstein basis his ideas on the framework that language is acquired by children learning different "language games" in which they learn to associate objects with meaning, and that those meanings are common to all, rather than something internalized. Hence, children learn language as they learn any other game, with the words all gaining meaning from the culture around them . certainly ,the culture is the part of human beings creation ,referring to the language use .totally ,whatever you learn and whatever you want to know must depends on language and understanding .also ,the understanding means you learn about the meanings of other person from the same language or other languge .for instance ,even though you can speak ,you can’t understand the others in alien place .so it is clear that no understanding is without meaning .the meaning is acquired that the langue be in use .On-line thinking and off-line thinkinhgAccording to Bickerton , on-line thinking means computation carried out in terms of neutral response .virtually , the animals and plants‘ behaviors are looked as the stimulating response which Bickerton regarded as the conciousness 1 (the fundamental level ) .the off-line on the basis of on-line is not caused by external cause more lastinginternal representations of those objects .at this level ,it shows human being can use the language and express their feelings ,all of which involves with the conciousness 2 and conciousness 3 .certaintly what the human beings do became reasonable ,distinguishing with the neutral response .obviously the animals are not able to do that .therefore we concluded that human being have great differences with the animals in intelligence .we are the off–line thinking (conciousness 2 and conciousness 3) on the basis of the language.Dennett, Daniel C. (1994)The Role of Language in Intelligence. In: Jean Khalfa (ed.) What is Intelligence? The Darwin College Lectures.Cambridge University Press. /cogstud/papers/rolelang.htmSummaryIn 1995 ,Bicckerton used the method of comparing human and animals to explore the relation among language ,intelligence and thinking in the chapter 3 of his book language and human behavior. but in 1994 ,Dennett had discussed the relation between the languge and thought by comparing human beings and animals . Dennett think that we are without any doubt at all the most intelligent .we are also the only species with the language .The reason why the language can contribute to the intelligence is hopeless to be investigated because of the cognitive closure but Indirectly inspecting the brain to get the evidence .Importantly , Dennett proposed a framework “The Tower of General-and Test”in which we can place the various design options for brains to see where their power comes from .Then ,he back the question to “What words do to us and What words do for us ”Generally , Dennett concluded that a proper application of Darwinian thinking makes great contributions to intelligence .Research questions1.Is the intelligence really originated from language ?2.Can we deny whether the animals have no intelligence withoutlanguage ?3.What is intelligence and language ? It is produced the by natualselection .According to “cognitive closure ”Whether should bethe Darwinian thinking doubted ?The Role of Language in IntelligenceDaniel C. Dennett1. Does thought depend on language?We human beings may not be the most admirable species on the planet, or the most likely to survive for another millennium, but we are without any doubt at all the most intelligent. We are also the only species with language. What is the relation between these two obvious facts?Before going on to consider that question, I must pause briefly to defend my second premise. Don't whales and dolphins, vervet monkeys and honey bees (the list goes on) have languages of sorts? Haven't chimpanzees in laboratories been taught rudimentary languages of sorts? Yes, and body language is a sort of language, and music is the international language (sort of) and politics is a sort of language, and the complex world of odor and olfaction is another, highly emotionally charged language, and so on. It sometimes seems that the highest praise we can bestow on a phenomenon we are studying is the claim that its complexities entitle it to be called a language--of sorts. This admiration for language--real language, the sort only we human beings use--is well-founded. The expressive, information-encoding properties of real language are practically limitless (in at least some dimensions), and the powers that other species acquire in virtue of their use of proto-languages,hemi-semi-demi-languages, are indeed similar to the powers we acquire thanks to our use of real language. These other species do climb a few steps up the mountain on whose summit we reside, thanks to language. Looking at the vast differences between their gains and ours is one way of approaching the question I want to address:How does language contribute to intelligence?I once saw a cartoon showing two hippopotami basking in a swamp, and one was saying to the other: "Funny--I keep thinking it's Tuesday!" Surely no hippopotamus could ever think the thought that it's Tuesday. But on the other hand, if a hippopotamus could say that it was thinking any thought, it could probably think the thought that it was Tuesday.What varieties of thought require language? What varieties of thought (if any) are possible without language? These might be viewed as purely philosophical questions, to be investigated by a systematic logical analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of various thoughts in various minds. And in principle such an investigation might work, but in practice it is hopeless. Any such philosophical analysis must be guided at the outset by reflections about what the "obvious" constraining facts about thought and language are, and these initial intuitions turn out to be treacherous.We watch a chimpanzee, with her soulful face, her inquisitive eyes and deft fingers, and we very definitely get a sense of the mind within, butthe more we watch, the more our picture of her mind swims before our eyes. In some ways she is so human, so insightful, but we soon learn (to our dismay or relief, depending on our hopes) that in other ways, she is so dense, so uncomprehending, so unreachably cut off from our human world. How could a chimp who so obviously understands A fail to understand B? It sometimes seems flat impossible--as impossible as a person who can do multiplication and division but can't count to ten. But is that really impossible? What about idiot savants who can play the piano but not read music, or children with Williams Syndrome (Infantile Hypercalcemia or IHC) who can carry on hyperfluent, apparently precocious conversations but are so profoundly retarded they cannot clothe themselves?Philosophical analysis by itself cannot penetrate this thicket of perplexities. While philosophers who define their terms carefully might succeed in proving logically that--let's say--mathematical thoughts are impossible without mathematical language, such a proof might be consigned to irrelevance by the surprising discovery that mathematical intelligence does not depend on being able to have mathematical thoughts so defined!Consider a few simple questions about chimpanzees: could chimpanzees learn to tend a fire--could they gather firewood, keep it dry, preserve the coals, break the wood, keep the fire size within proper bounds? And if they couldn't invent these novel activities on their own, could they be trained by human beings to do these things? I wonder. Here's another question. Suppose you imagine something novel--I hereby invite you to imagine a man climbing up a rope with a plastic dustbin over his head. An easy mental task for you. Could a chimpanzee do the same thing in her mind's eye? I wonder. I chose the elements--man, rope, climbing, dustbin, head--as familiar objects in the perceptual and behavioral world of a laboratory chimp, but I wonder whether a chimp could put them together in this novel way--even by accident, as it were. You were provoked to perform your mental act by my verbal suggestion, and probably you often perform similar mental acts on your own in response to verbal suggestions you give yourself--not out loud, but definitely in words. Could it be otherwise? Could a chimpanzee get itself to perform such a mental act without the help of verbal suggestion? Endnote 1 I wonder.2. "Cognitive closure": comparing our minds with othersThese are rather simple questions about chimpanzees, but neither you nor I know the answers--yet. The answers are not impossible to acquire, but not easy either; controlled experiments could yield the answers, which would shed light on the role of language in turning brains into minds like ours. I think it is very likely that every content that has so far passed through your mind and mine, as I have been presenting this talk, isstrictly off limits to non-language-users, be they apes or dolphins, or even non-signing Deaf people. If this is true, it is a striking fact, so striking that it reverses the burden of proof in what otherwise would be a compelling argument: the claim, first advanced by the linguist Noam Chomsky, and more recently defended by the philosophers Jerry Fodor and Colin McGinn (1990), that our minds, like those of all other species, must suffer "cognitive closure" with regard to some topics of inquiry. Spiders can't contemplate the concept of fishing, and birds--some of whom are excellent at fishing--aren't up to thinking about democracy. What is inaccessible to the dog or the dolphin, may be readily grasped by the chimp, but the chimp in turn will be cognitively closed to some domains we human beings have no difficulty thinking about. Chomsky and company ask a rhetorical question: What makes us think we are different? Aren't there bound to be strict limits on what Homo sapiens may conceive? This presents itself as a biological, naturalistic argument, reminding us of our kinship with the other beasts, and warning us not to fall into the ancient trap of thinking "how like an angel" we human "souls," with our "infinite" minds are.I think that on the contrary, it is a pseudo-biological argument, one that by ignoring the actual biological details, misdirects us away from the case that can be made for taking one species--our species--right off the scale of intelligence that ranks the pig above the lizard and the ant above the oyster. Comparing our brains with bird brains or dolphin brains is almost beside the point, because our brains are in effect joined together into a single cognitive system that dwarfs all others. They are joined by one of the innovations that has invaded our brains and no others: language. I am not making the foolish claim that all our brains are knit together by language into one gigantic mind, thinking its transnational thoughts, but rather that each individual human brain, thanks to its communicative links, is the beneficiary of the cognitive labors of the others in a way that gives it unprecedented powers. Naked animal brains are no match at all for the heavily armed and outfitted brains we carry in our heads.A purely philosophical approach to these issues is hopeless, I have claimed. It must be supplemented--not replaced--with researches in a variety of disciplines ranging from cognitive psychology and neuroscience to evolutionary theory and paleo-anthropology. I raised the question about whether chimps could learn to tend a fire because of its close--but treacherous!--resemblance to questions that have been discussed in the recent flood of excellent books and articles about the evolution of the human mind (see Further Reading).I will not attempt on this occasion to answer the big questions, but simply explain why answers to them will hinge on answers to the questions raised--and to some degree answered--in this literature. In the terms of the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins (1976), my role today is to be a vector of memes, attempting to infect the minds in one niche--my home discipline of philosophy--with memes that are already flourishing in others.At some point in prehistory, our ancestors tamed fire; the evidence strongly suggests that this happened hundreds of thousands of years--or even as much as a million years (Donald, p.114)--before the advent of language, but of course after our hominid line split away from the ancestors of modern apes such as chimpanzees. What, if not language, gave the first fire-taming hominids the cognitive power to master such a project? Or is fire-tending not such a big deal? Perhaps the only reason we don't find chimps in the wild sitting around campfires is that their rainy habitats have never left enough tinder around to give fire a chance to be tamed. (The neurobiologist William Calvin tells me that Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's pygmy chimps in Atlanta love to go on picnics in the woods, and enjoy staring into the campfire's flames, just as we do.)3. Need to know vs. the commando team: two design typesIf termites can create elaborate, well-ventilated cities of mud, and weaverbirds can weave audaciously engineered hanging nests, and beavers can build dams that take months to complete, couldn't chimpanzees tend a simple campfire? This rhetorical question climbs another misleading ladder of abilities. It ignores the independently well-evidenced possibility that there are two profoundly different ways of building dams: the way beavers do and the way we do. The differences are not necessarily in the products, but in the control structures within the brains that create them. A child might study a weaverbird building its nest, and then replicate the nest herself, finding the right pieces of grass, and weaving them in the right order, creating, by the very same series of steps, an identical nest. A film of the two building processes occurringside-by-side might overwhelm us with a sense that we were seeing the same phenomenon twice, but it would be a big mistake to impute to the bird the sort of thought processes we know or imagine to be going on in the child. There could be very little in common between the processes going on in the child's brain and the bird's brain. The bird is (apparently) endowed with a collection of interlocking special-purpose minimalist subroutines, well-designed by evolution according to the notorious "Need to Know Principle" of espionage: give each agent as little information as will suffice for it to accomplish its share of the mission.Control systems designed under this principle can be astonishingly successful--witness the birds' nests, after all--whenever the environment has enough simplicity and regularity, and hence predictability, to favor predesign of the whole system. The system's very design in effect makes a prediction--a wager, in fact--that the environment will be the way it must be for the system to work. When the complexity of encountered environments rises, however, and unpredictability becomes a more severe problem, a different design principle kicks in: the commando team principle illustrated by such films as "The Guns of Navarone": give each agent as much knowledge about the total project as possible, so that the team has a chance of ad libbing appropriately when unanticipated obstacles arise.Fortunately, we don't have to inspect brain processes directly to get evidence of the degree to which one design principle or the other is operating in a particular organism--although in due course it will be wonderful to get confirmation from neuroscience. In the meantime, we can conduct experiments that reveal the hidden dissimilarities by showing how bird and child respond to abnormal obstacles and opportunities along the way.My favorite example of such an experiment with beavers is Wilsson (1974): It turns out that beavers hate the sound of running water and will cast about frantically for something--anything--that will bring relief; Wilsson played recordings of running water from loudspeakers, and the beavers responded by plastering the loudspeakers with mud.So there is a watershed in the terrain of evolutionary design space; when a control problem lies athwart it, it could be a matter of chance which direction evolution propelled the successful descendants. Perhaps, then, there are two ways of tending fires--roughly, the beaver-dam way, and our way. If so, it is a good thing for us that our ancestors didn't hit upon the beaver-dam way, for if they had, the woods might today be full of apes sitting around campfires, but we would not be here to marvel at them.4. The Tower of Generate-and-TestI want to propose a framework in which we can place the various design options for brains, to see where their power comes from. It is an outrageously oversimplified structure, but idealization is the price one should often be willing to pay for synoptic insight. I will call it the Tower of Generate-and-Test. Endnote 2In the beginning there was Darwinian evolution of species by natural selection. A variety of candidate organisms were blindly generated by moreor less arbitrary processes of recombination and mutation of genes. These organisms were field tested, and only the best designs survived. This is the ground floor of the tower. Let us call its inhabitants Darwinian creatures. (Is there perhaps a basement? Recently speculations by physicists and cosmologists about the evolution of universes opens the door to such a prospect, but I will not explore it on this occasion. My topic today is the highest stories of the Tower.)This process went through many millions of cycles, producing many wonderful designs, both plant and animal, and eventually among its novel creations were some designs with the property of phenotypic plasticity. The individual candidate organisms were not wholly designed at birth, or in other words there were elements of their design that could be adjusted by events that occurred during the field tests. Some of these candidates, we may suppose, were no better off than their hard-wired cousins, since they had no way of favoring (selecting for an encore) the behavioral options they were equipped to "try out", but others, we may suppose, were fortunate enough to have wired-in "reinforcers" that happened to favor Smart Moves, actions that were better for their agents. These individuals thus confronted the environment by generating a variety of actions, which they tried out, one by one, until they found one that "worked". We may call this subset of Darwinian creatures, the creatures with conditionable plasticity, Skinnerian creatures, since, as B. F. Skinner was fond of pointing out, operant conditioning is not just analogous to Darwinian natural selection; it is continuous with it. "Where inherited behavior leaves off, the inherited modifiability of the process of conditioning takes over." (Skinner, 1953, p.83)Skinnerian conditioning is a fine capacity to have, so long as you are not killed by one of your early errors. A better system involves preselection among all the possible behaviors or actions, weeding out the truly stupid options before risking them in the harsh world. We human beings are creatures capable of this third refinement, but we are probably not alone. We may call the beneficiaries of this third story in the Tower Popperian creatures, since as Sir Karl Popper once elegantly put it, this design enhancement "permits our hypotheses to die in our stead." Unlike the merely Skinnerian creatures who survive because they are lucky, we Popperian creatures survive because we're smart--of course we're just lucky to be smart, but that's better than just being lucky. Endnote 3But how is this preselection in Popperian agents to be done? Where is the feedback to come from? It must come from a sort of inner environment--an inner something-or-other that is structured in such a way that the surrogate actions it favors are more often than not the very actions the real world would also bless, if they were actually performed. In short,the inner environment, whatever it is, must contain lots of information about the outer environment and its regularities. Nothing else (except magic) could provide preselection worth having. Now here we must be very careful not to think of this inner environment as simply a replica of the outer world, with all its physical contingencies reproduced. (In such a miraculous toy world, the little hot stove in your head would be hot enough to actually burn the little finger in your head that you placed on it!) The information about the world has to be there, but it also has to be structured in such a way that there is a non-miraculous explanation of how it got there, how it is maintained, and how it actually achieves the preselective effects that are its raison d'être.We have now reached the story of the Tower on which I want to build. Once we get to Popperian creatures, creatures whose brains have the potential to be shaped into inner environments with preselective prowess, what happens next? How does new information about the outer environment get incorporated into these brains? This is where earlier design decisions--and in particular, choices between Need to Know and Commando Team--come back to haunt the designer; for if a particular species' brain design has already gone down the Need to Know path with regard to some control problem, only minor modifications (fine tuning, you might say) can be readily made to the existing structures, so the only hope of making a major revision of the internal environment to account for new problems, new features of the external environment that matter, is to submerge the old hard-wiring under a new layer of pre-emptive control (a theme developed in the work of the AI researcher Rodney Brooks). It is these higher levels of control that have the potential for vast increases in versatility. And it is at these levels in particular, that we should look for the role of language (when it finally arrives on the scene), in turning our brains into virtuoso pre-selectors.We engage in our share of rather mindless routine behavior, but our important acts are often directed on the world with incredible cunning, composing projects exquisitely designed under the influence of vast libraries of information about the world. The instinctual actions we share with other species show the benefits derived by the harrowing explorations of our ancestors. The imitative actions we share with some higher animals may show the benefits of information gathered not just by our ancestors, but also by our social groups over generations, transmittednon-genetically by a "tradition" of imitation. But our more deliberatively planned acts show the benefits of information gathered and transmitted by our conspecifics in every culture, including, moreover, items of information that no single individual has embodied or understood in any sense. And while some of this information may be of rather ancient。
nature of language and__ lingusitics
6. Recreational: the use of language for the sheer joy of using it.
baby‟s babbling chanter‟s chanting verbal dueling (对山／民歌） cross talk; jokes, 小品， 双簧， 评书, tongue twister childeren‟s rhythmic games (拍手歌，绕 口令，顺口溜，儿童文字游戏） poetry writing (诗歌的押韵，打油诗jingle) short message
• 3. Textual: • The textual function refers to the fact that languages have mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage different from a random list of sentences. It’s about the verbal world. • In the textual metafunction, a clause is analyzed into Theme and Rheme.
Halliday (seven functions)
Halliday proposed 7 categories of language function by observing child language development: • • • • • • • Instrumental 工具功能 e.g. I want … Regulatory 控制功能 e.g. Do what I say Representational 表达功能 e.g. to tell sth Interactional 互动功能 e.g. How are you? Personal 自指性功能 e.g. I am sad. Heuristic 启发功能 e.g. tell me why Imaginative 想象功能 e.g. let‟ s pretend
英语语言学概论（自考）
1. What are the difference between general linguistics and descriptive linguistics and what sis the relationship between them? (P.1)A: Differences between general and descriptive linguistics:(1) They have different goals:General linguistics deals with language; descriptive linguistics study one particular language;(2) They have different aims:General linguistics aims at developing a theory that describes the rules of human language in general;Descriptive linguistics attempts to establish a model that describes the rules of this particular language.Relationships between general and descriptive linguistics:General and descriptive linguistics depend on each other:(1) General linguistics provides descriptive linguistics with a general framework in which a particular language can be analyzed and described; (2) The resulting descriptions of particular languages supply empirical evidence which may confirm or refute the models put forward by general linguists.2. What is the nature of language? (P7)Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, which is creative, double-structured and changeable.3. What is the difference between langue and parole? (P2/P24)a. Langue is the system of language. Parole is the speakers’ speech.b. Langue refers to the abstract system of a language, while parole refers to the concrete act of speaking in a definite time, place and situation.c. Langue underlies parole and parole, in turn, is a manifestation of langue.4. What is the difference between competence and performance? (P2)a. Competence is the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language.b. Performance is the actual use of language in concrete situations.c. Competence is abstract, while performance is concrete.5. Why do linguists maintain that language is primarily speech? (P4) Linguists maintain that language is primarily speech, and not the written form. This view may be justified by the following reasons.a. Biologically speaking, children begin to learn to speak much earlier than to learn to read and write.b. Functionally speaking, the spoken form is used more frequently than the written form in our daily life.c. Historically speaking, all human languages were spoken before they were written and there are still many languages in the world today which have not been written down.The emphasis on the spoken form indicates that linguistic study is primarily based on the data collected from living speech.6. What does it mean by saying that language is arbitrary, creative and double-structured? (P4-5)A. The relationship between the sounds and their meaning is arbitrary.B. Language is creative.a. Every language contains an infinite number of sentences, which, however, are generated by a small set of rules and a finite set of words.b. The length of a sentence has no limit in theory.c. The rules with recursive properly can account for the creative aspect of language.C. Language is double-structured. There are two levels: grammatically-meaningful and sound-meaningless.7. What features of language can differentiate human languages from animal communicative systems? (P7)Human language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, which is creative, double-structured and changeable. Those unique features like creativity, duality of structure and changeability can differentiate human languages from animal communicative systems and enable human languages to be the most efficient, flexible and versatile means of communication in the world.8. How many stages does the scientific method have? What are they? (P9) There are four stages of scientific method:a. collecting data,b. forming a hypothesisc. testing the hypothesisd. drawing conclusions9. What are the three linguistic biases? (P9-10, P7)a. One common linguistic bias is that some languages are primitive and some languages are advanced.b. Another deep-rooted bias is that only the standard variety is the pure form of a language.c. Change is not natural for all living languages and such a language is a sign of corruption and decay.10. How is a rule constructed? (P15)a. To construct a rule, the linguist starts with collecting data.b. Based on the data collected, he may construct a very simple rule as a tentative version.c. Then he examines the tentative rule against further data. If the additional data do not agree with it, he has to modify it.d. He keeps on testing the rule and, accordingly, revising the rule until the rule can account for all the relevant data collected.Thus, the rule formed is open to further modifications.11. Give examples to illustrate the two features of an adequate model of competence: explicitness and generativeness. (P15-16/P6)a. By saying a linguistic model is explicit, we mean that the rules the model contains are clearly and precisely defined. Even a computer can produce all and only the grammatical sentences if the rules are fed to the machine.b. By saying the model is generative, we mean that the model contains only a small set of rules which, however, can generate an indefinitely large number ofc. For example, “so…that” is explicit, but they can generate infinite sentences. eg. He is so fat that he could not ran fast.He was so lazy that he never washed his clothes.…12. What are the four types of linguistic knowledge? (P18-19)The four types of linguistic knowledge are phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic.a. Phonological knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about the sounds and sound patterns of his language.b. Morphological knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about how a word is formed.c. Syntactic knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about whether a sentence is grammatical or not.c. Semantic knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about the meaning of language.13. Why is Saussre regarded as the former of modern linguistics? (P21-22)a. The obvious reason is that the book under his name “A Course in General Linguistics” is the first real essay on linguistic theory.b. In this book, quite a few theoretical distinctions introduced have become foundations of linguistic study and exerted great influence on the later development linguistics.c. Chief among them are the distinctions between synchronic and diachronic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic, langue and parole.14. Give examples to illustrate the difference between synchronic and diachronic. (P22)a. If we study the changes in the Chinese language that took place between the 1940’s and the 1960’s, it would be a diachronic study.b. But if we study the Chinese language in the 1940’s, then it would be a synchronic study.concerned with the historical development of a language and the latter is concerned with the “state” of a language at a particular point of time.15. Give examples to illustrate the difference between syntagmatic and paradigmatic. (P116-118/P22-23)a. A syntagmatic relation refers to the sequential characteristic of speech.b. A paradigmatic relation is a relation between a linguistic element in an utterance and linguistic elements outside that utterance.c. We can go tomorrow syntagmatic relationShe may come soonI will ask nextY ou could sleep now………paradigmatic relation16. What is a consonant and what is a vowel? (P30)a. A consonant is a speech sound where the airstream from the longs is either completely blocked, partially blocked or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction.b. A vowel is a speech sound in which the airstream from the lungs is not blocked in any way in the mouth or throat, and which is usually pronounced with vibrations of the vocal cords.17. Is the spelling of words a reliable means of describing English sounds? Why or Why not? (P30-31)No, it isn’t.a. Sometimes a single letter may represent different sounds.b. Sometimes, different letters or combinations of letters may r4epresent a single sound.c. The advantage of this system is that within the system, one symbol represents one sound and every symbol has a consistent value.18. What is the difference between plosives and affricates? (P37)b. Affricates are brought together to form a complete closure but not followed by a sudden release, rather by a low release with audile friction.19. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology? (P20, P53)a. English phonetics is concerned with all speech sounds that occur in the English language. It studies how those sounds are produced, transmitted and perceived, and how they re described and classified.b. Different from English phonetics, English phonology does not deal with the actual production of English sounds, but with the abstract aspects: the function of sounds and their patterns of combination.20. What are the three conditions of a minimal pair? (P54)a. They are different in meaningb. They differ only in one sound segment.c. The different sounds occur in the same position in strings.21. Give examples to illustrate the differences between phonemes, phones and allophones. (P90)a. Phonemes are said to be minimal distinctive units in the sound system of a language.b. Phones are the realizations of phonemes.c. Allophones are the realizations of a particular phoneme.d. For example,22. Give examples to illustrate the differences between contrastive distribution, complementary distribution and free variation. (P59-60)a. If two or more sounds can occur in the same environment and the substitution of one sound for another brings about a change in meaning, they are in contrastive distribution.b. If two or more sounds never appear in the same environment, they are said toc. If two or more sounds can occur in the same environment and the substitution of one sound for another does not cause a change in meaning, they are said to be in free variation.d. The sounds either in contrastive distribution or in free variation can occur in the same environment. The difference between them lies in the fact that in the former case, the substitution of one sound for another results in a change in meaning, but this does not happen in the latter case. Complementary distribution is clearly different from the previous two types of distribution. The sounds in complementary distribution never occur in the same environment.23 What are the 3 principles of identifying phonemes? (P61)a. The sounds that are in contrastive distribution are different phonemesb. The sounds that are always in free variation are allophones of the same phoneme.c. The sounds that are in complementary distribution and also phonetically similar are allophones of the same phoneme.24. What is the difference between segmental features and suprasegmental features? What are the suprasegmental features? (P69)a. The distinctive features, which can only have an effect on one sound segment, are called segmental features.b. The distinctive features, which can affect more than one sound segment and can also contrast meaning, are called suprasegmental features.25. What’s the difference between phonemes and morphemes? (P54, P83)a. Phoneme is defined as a minimal distinctive unit in the sound system of a language.b. A morpheme is defined as a minimal meaningful unit in the grammatical system of a language.26. What are interrelations between semantic and structural classifications of morphemes? (P84, P86)a. Semantically, morphemes are grouped into general categories: root morphemes (roots) and affixational morphemes (affixes).b. Structurally, they fall into two classes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.c. All free morphemes are roots, but not all roots are free morphemes. All affixes are bound morphemes, but not all bound morphemes are affixes..27. Please explain the difference between inflectional and derivational28. How do we judge whether two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are one morph or different morphs? (P92-93)a. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are identical in both form and meaning, then they are regarded as one morph.b. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are the same in form but different in meaning, then there are as many morphs as there are meanings.c. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are the same in meaning but different in form, then there are as many morphs as there are forms.d. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are different both in form and meaning, there are as many morphs as there different forms and meanings.If two or more morphs are semantically identical and also in complementary distributing, they are then said to allomorphs of the same morpheme; otherwise, they belong to different morphemes.30. What is IC analysis? (P99/P126)a. IC analysis simply means that we divide the morphemes of a word into the two groups and then divide each group into subgroups and so on, until we reach single morphemes.b. Labeled IC simply means that we divide the morphemes of a word or the words of a sentence into the two groups and then divide each group into subgroups and so on, until we reach single morphemes of a word on a signal word of a sentence..31. What is the difference between an empty morph and a zero morph? (P97-98)a. Empty morph is defined as a morph that has form but no meaning.b. Zero morph is defined as a morph that has no form but has meaning.32. What are two ways of studying sentences? Explain them. (P116)a. We make structural descriptions of sentences to illustrate the parts of a sentence and the relationships among them, this is called static study.b. We examine the process by which sentences are generated by syntactic rules this is called dynamic study.33. What are the three syntactic relations? (P116-118)a. Sequential or syntagmatic relations are refers to the linear ordering of the words and the phrases within a sentence.b. Substitutional (paradigmatic) relation is a kind of relation between linguistic forms in a sentence and linguistic forms outside the sentence.c. Hierarchical relation shows us the inner layering of sentences.34. What are the differences between surface structure and deep structure?a. A surface structure corresponds to the linear arrangement of words; a deep structure corresponds to the meaningful grouping of words.b. A surface structure is relatively concrete, and a deep structure is abstract.c. A surfaces structure gives the form of a sentence; while the deep structure gives the meaning of a sentence.d. A surface structure is pronounceable, but a deep structure is not pronounceable.35. What are the three kinds of operations performed by T-rules? (P180)a. rearranging the sentence elements;b. adding a new element to the phrase marker;c. deleting an element from the phrase marker.36. What are the differences between PS rules and T-rules? (P139)a. TG grammar has assumed that to generate sentences, we start with deep structures and then transform them into surface structures.b. Deep structures are generated by phrase structure rules (PS rules), and surface structures are derived from their deep structures by transformational rules (T-rules).英语语言学概论11Phonetics has three sub-branches:(1) articulatory phonetics that is concerned with how a sound is produced by the vocal organs;(2) acoustic phonetics that deals with how a sound is transmitted from the speaker ’s mouth to the listener ’s ears;(3) auditory phonetics that investigates how a sound is perceived by the listener.2. Speech organs1-nasal cavity; 2-lips; 3-teeth; 4-aveolar ridge; 5-hard palate 6-velum (soft palate); 7-uvula; 8-apex (tip) of tongue; 9-blade (front) of tongue;10-dorsum (back) of tongue; 11-oral cavity;12-pharynx; 13-epiglottis;14-larynx; 15-vocal cords; 16-trachea; 17-esophagus;。
lecture 1 Language
Frogs croak.
Goats bleat.
Asses bray. Beetles drone. Camels grunt.
Ducks quack.
Flies buzz.
Geese cackle (gabble).
Horses neigh ( snort).
Hens cluck. Lions roar Mice squeak
More Basic Statements About Language
• • • •
1. A linguistic message is linear. 2. Wherever humans exist, language exists. 3. All languages change through time. 4. Speakers of all languages are capable of producing and comprehending an infinite set of sentences.
Examples of Creativity
1. a. I know you. b. I know you know John. c. In knows that John. d. I know you know this John knows that John knows Mary… 2. a. 你们曾教学生学英语。
slattern, slut, slang, sly, sloppy, slovenly
Sk-: 与表面接触
skate, skim, skin, skid, skimp
-ump: 表示圆形体：
plump, chump, rump, hump, stump, dump, mump
英语语言学常考大题(本科、研究生、复试通用)
1. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are combined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are. The term "human" in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the communication systems of other living creatures. The term "communication" means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.2. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples. 1) ArbitrarinessAs mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirely arbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitationof sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.2) ProductivityLanguage is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive.3) DualityThe duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even comes near to possessing it.4) DisplacementDisplacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.5) Cultural transmissionHuman beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically transmitted.3. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; it collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way.4. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.5. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language.Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amountof information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposesFinally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother tongue.6. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable; it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.7. How do you understand competence and performance?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.8. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’sdistinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?Although Saussure’s distinction and Chomsky’s are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual.9. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash,etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary.10. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?1) In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.2) In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.3) Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school.11. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.12. Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.1) The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as `import andimport. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: `blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a black `bird is a bird that is black.2) The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives, adverbs etc are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.” For example, to emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun my, which under normal circumstances is not stressed.3) English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones: When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said.13. In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for other results in a change of meaning. If it does, the two sounds then represent different phonemes.14. What are the main features of the English compounds?Orthographically a compound can be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by the last element. Semantically, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic, not calculable from the meanings of all its components. Phonetically, the word stress of a compound usually falls on the first element.15. Discuss the types of morphemes with examples.Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves, for example, “book-” in the word “bookish”.Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as “-ish” in “bookish”. Bound morphemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root is seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself although it has a clear and definite meaning, such as “gene-” in the word “generate”. Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as “-s” in the word “books” to indicate plurality of nouns. Derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such as “mis-” in the word “misinform”. Derivational affixes can also be divided into prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as “dis- ” in the word “dislike”, while suffixes occur at the end of a word such as “-less” in the word “friendless”.16. What are the basic components of a sentence?Normally, a sentence consists of at least a subject and its predicate which contains a finite verb or a verb phrase.17. Are the elements in a sentence linearly structured? Why?No. Language is both linearly and hierarchically structured. When a sentence is uttered or written down, the words of the sentence are produced one after another in a sequence. A closer examination of a sentence shows that a sentence is not composed of sequence of words arranged in a simple linear order with one adding onto another following a simple arithmetic logic. In fact, sentences are also hierarchically structured. They are organized by grouping together words of the same syntactic category, such as noun phrase (NP) or verb phrase (VP), as can be seen from the following tree diagram:SNP VPDet N V NPDet NThe boy likes the music.18. What are the advantages of using tree diagrams in the analysis of sentence structures?The tree diagram can not only reveal a linear order, but also a hierarchical structure that groups words into structural constituents. It can, in addition, show the syntactic category of each structural constituent, thus it is believed to most truthfully illustratethe constituent relationship among linguistic elements.。
Lecture2- the nature of language
Origin of Language
WHERE
DOES language come from?
Origin of Language
This is a time-honored question. No definite agreement has been reached on this issue. But several hypotheses (speculations) have been proposed:
Functions of Language
Functions of Language Examples I have got a knife. how are you? That’s fantastic! you are fired!
Linguists talk about the functions of language in an abstract sense, that is, not in terms of using language to chat, to think, to buy and sell, to read and write, to greet, praise and condemn people, etc. They summarize these practical functions and attempt some broad classifications of the basic functions of language.
Functions of Language （Halliday）
① Ideational function: Jakobson’s referential function ② Interpersonal function: Jakobson’s emotive, conative, and phatic ③ Textual function: Jakobson’s metalingual function, poetic function
语言学试卷
语言学期中测试班级: 姓名：学号:I: Multiple Choice第一章语言与语言学1. Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of ___.A. A particular languageB. The system of a particular languageC. Human languages in generalD. The English languageWilliam Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet said "What's in a name That which wecall a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." This illustrates ___.A. the arbitrary nature of languageB. the big difference between human language and animal communicationC. the creative nature of languageD. the universality of language3. Which of the following features is NOT one of the design features of languageA. Productive.B. Dual.C. SymbolicD.Arbitrary4. Who put forward the distinction between langue and paroleA. HallidayB. Ferdinand de SaussureC. Noam ChomskyD. Charles Hockett5. One of the properties of language is that a language user can understand and produce sentenceshe/she has never heard before. This property of language is called ___.A. dualityB. arbitraryC. displacementD. Productivity6. The ____ function refers to the fact that language can be used for establishinga favorable atmosphere or maintaining social contact rather than for exchanging information or ideas.A. phaticB. directiveC. evocativeD. performative7. Modern linguistics is the scientific study of language. Consequently, modern linguistics emphasizes the importance of language data collected from ___.A. newspapers and magazinesB. writing by the famous writersC. the language people actually speakD. radio broadcasts8. Language is passed on from one generation to the next through teaching and learningrather than by instinct. This property of language is called ___.A. interchangeabilityB. cultural transmissionC. productivityD. arbitrarinessa linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to be ___.A. DescriptiveB. linguisticC. prescriptiveD. analytic linguistic10. Which of the following statements is NOT trueA. Language is a system.B. Animals also have language.C. Language is symbolic.D. Language is arbitrary.11. According to Noam Chomsky, which of the following is seen as the ideal user’s internalized knowledge of his languageA. Competence.B. Parole.C. PerformanceD. Langue12. Our linguistic ability is a ___ gift of the species' gene program.A. biologicalB. physicalC. scientificD. chemical13. The description of a language at some point in time is a ___ study.A. diachronicB. prescriptiveC. descriptiveD. synchronic14. One of the properties of language is that there is no logical connection between meaning and sounds. This property of language is ___.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrariness15. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This is what we mean by ___.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrariness16. Cultural transmission is one of the ____features of language.A. suprasegmentalB. pragmaticC. distinctiveD. design17. As modern linguistics aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, and not lay down rules for "correct " linguistic behavior, it is said to be ___.A. descriptiveB. sociolinguisticC. prescriptiveD. psycholinguistic18. Which of the following is the exception to the feature of arbitrariness of languageA. Native English wordsB. Borrowed wordsC. Onomatopoeic wordsD. One-syllable words19. Saussure took a(n) ____ view of language, while Chomsky looks at language froma ___ point of view.A. sociological, psychologicalB. psychological, sociologicalC. Applied, pragmaticD. Semantic, linguistic20. Modern linguistics regards the written language as ___.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable第二章语音学与音系学1. The tone, defined as variation, is an important suprasegmental feature of tone languages such as ____.A. ChineseB. EnglishC. Chinese and EnglishD. English and French2. According to the places of articulation, sounds in English such as /t/, /l/ and /z/ can be labeled as ____ ones.A. dentalB. bilabialC. velar D alveolar3. Of the following sound combinations, only ____ is permissible according to the sequentla1 rules in English.A. kiblB. bkil C ilkb D. ilbk4. Of all the speech organs, the ____ is the most flexible.A lip B. mouth C. vocal cord D. tongue5. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds.A. voicelessB. voicedC. vowelD. consonantal6. ____ is a voiced alveolar stop.A . /z / B. /d / C. /k/ D. /b/7. The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by "copying" a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ____.A. identicalB. similarC. exactly alikeD. same8. Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning, they are said to be ____.A. in phonemic contrastB. in complementary distributionC. the allophonesD. minimal pair9. The sound /f/ is a ____.A. voiced palatal affricateB. voiced alveolar stopC. voiceless velar fricativeD. voiceless labiodentals fricativel0. A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position.A. backB. centralC. frontD. middle11. Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____.A. suprasegmental featuresB. immediate constituentsC. phonetic componentsD. semantic features12. A(n)____is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit, a collection of distinctive phonetic features.A. phoneB. soundC. allophoneD. phoneme13. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ____ of that phoneme.A. phonesB. soundsC. phonemesD. allophones14. Which of the following statements about allophone is NOT correctA. Allophones are different forms of the same phoneme.B. Allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution.C. Allophones distinguish meani ng·D. Allophones are language specific.15. When pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence rather than to the word, they are collectively known as ____.A. intonationB. toneC. phonemeD. sentence stress16. Which of the following is also called "semivowelsA. fricativesB. liquidsC. affricatesD. glides17. In terms of place of articulation, the two consonants /f/, /v/ are ____.A. denta1B. alveolarC. palatalD. labiodental18. In terms of manners of articulation, the sounds /p/, /b/, /t/,/d/, /k/,/g/ are ____.A. bilabialB. stopsC. affricatesD. fricatives19. What is your understanding of "the Adam’s apple”A. Part of Adam’s body.B. The front part of larynx.C. The top of larynx.D. A kind of apple.20. Which of the following is NOT a velar soundA. /k/B. /ŋ/C. /v/D./g/ 第三章形态学1. ____ is a process of combining two or more words into one lexical unit.A. DerivationB. BlendingC. AbbreviationD. Compounding2. Words such as "telex " and "workfare "are created through ____.A. blendingB. compoundingC. conversionD. affixation3. According to the morphological analysis, the underlined part in the word “internationali sm” should be referred to as a ____.A. rootB. stemC. prefixD. suffix4. Which of the following words is made up of bound morphemes onlyA. Happiness.B. Television.C. Ecology.D. Teacher.5. Which of the following words is a derivativeA. Able.B. Pet.C. Dusty.D. Change.6. How many morphemes are there in the word “d i sarmed”A. 2.B. 3.C. 4D. 57. When "-ing" in "gangling" is removed to get a verb "gangle", we call this way of creating words ____.A. suffixingB. compoundingC. back-formationD. acronymy8. The phoneme "vision" in the common word “television” is a(n) ____.A. bound morphemeB. bound formC. inflectional morphemeD. free morpheme9. As is known ____ are often thought to be the smallest meaningful units of language.A. wordsB. sentencesC. phonemesD. morphemes10. “-s” in the word "books" is ____.A. a derivative affixB. a stemC. an inflectional affixD. a root11. The meaning carried by the inflectional morpheme is ____.A. lexicalB. morphemicC. grammaticalD. semantic12. The compound word "bookstore" is the place where books are sold. This indicates that themeaning of a compound____.A. is the sum total of the meaning of its componentsB. can always be worked out by looking at the meanings of morphemesC. is the same as the meaning of a free phraseD. none of the above13. Bound morphemes are those that ____.A. have to be used independentlyB. cannot be combined with other morphemesC. have to be combined with other morphemesD. can either be free or bound14. As one of the affixes, a prefix is ____.A. below the stemB. after the stemC. before the stemD. in the middle of the stem15. ____ is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.A. syntaxB. grammarC. morphologyD. morpheme16. Which one of the following is NOT a suffix for adjectivesA. -ous .B. -nessC. -al17. ____ modify the meaning of the stem, but usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.A. PrefixesB. SuffixesC. RootsD. Affixes18. The stem of the word “d isengagements” is ____.A. engagementB. disengageC. engageD. disengagement19. Which of the following words is a derivational oneA. CocktailB. ReadsC. EstablishmentD. Kids20. ____ and ____ can constitute a compound.A. A stem, an affixB. A free morpheme; a free morphemeC. A root, an affixD. A prefix, a suffixII: Define the following terms2. parole3. competence4. performance5. synchronic study6. diachronic study7. IPA8. phonetics 229. narrow transcription10. phonology11. phoneme12. phone13. allophone14. assimilation rules15. suprasegmental features16. morpheme17. morph18. allomorph19. free morpheme20. bound morpheme21. inflectional morpheme22. derivational morpheme23 compounding24. conversion25. derivation语言学期中测试班级: 姓名：学号:I: Multiple Choice第一章语言与语言学1. Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of ___.A. A particular languageB. The system of a particular languageC. Human languages in generalD. The English languageWilliam Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet said "What's in a name That which wecall a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." This illustrates ___.A. the arbitrary nature of languageB. the big difference between human language and animal communicationC. the creative nature of languageD. the universality of language3. Which of the following features is NOT one of the design features of languageA. Productive.B. Dual.C. SymbolicD.Arbitrary4. Who put forward the distinction between langue and paroleA. HallidayB. Ferdinand de SaussureC. Noam ChomskyD. Charles Hockett5. One of the properties of language is that a language user can understand and produce sentenceshe/she has never heard before. This property of language is called ___.A. dualityB. arbitraryC. displacementD. Productivity6. The ____ function refers to the fact that language can be used for establishinga favorable atmosphere or maintaining social contact rather than for exchanging information or ideas.A. phaticB. directiveC. evocativeD. performative7. Modern linguistics is the scientific study of language. Consequently, modern linguistics emphasizes the importance of language data collected from ___.A. newspapers and magazinesB. writing by the famous writersC. the language people actually speakD. radio broadcasts8. Language is passed on from one generation to the next through teaching and learning rather than by instinct. This property of language is called ___.A. interchangeabilityB. cultural transmissionC. productivityD. arbitrarinessa linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to be ___.A. DescriptiveB. linguisticC. prescriptiveD. analytic linguistic10. Which of the following statements is NOT trueA. Language is a system.B. Animals also have language.C. Language is symbolic.D. Language is arbitrary.11. According to Noam Chomsky, which of the following is seen as the ideal user’s internalized knowledge of his languageA. Competence.B. Parole.C. PerformanceD. Langue12. Our linguistic ability is a ___ gift of the species' gene program.A. biologicalB. physicalC. scientificD. chemical13. The description of a language at some point in time is a ___ study.A. diachronicB. prescriptiveC. descriptiveD. synchronic14. One of the properties of language is that there is no logical connection between meaning and sounds. This property of language is ___.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrariness15. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This is what we mean by ___.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrariness16. Cultural transmission is one of the ____features of language.A. suprasegmentalB. pragmaticC. distinctiveD. design17. As modern linguistics aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, and not lay down rules for "correct " linguistic behavior, it is said to be ___.A. descriptiveB. sociolinguisticC. prescriptiveD. psycholinguistic18. Which of the following is the exception to the feature of arbitrariness of languageA. Native English wordsB. Borrowed wordsC. Onomatopoeic wordsD. One-syllable words19. Saussure took a(n) ____ view of language, while Chomsky looks at language froma ___ point of view.A. sociological, psychologicalB. psychological, sociologicalC. Applied, pragmaticD. Semantic, linguistic20. Modern linguistics regards the written language as ___.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable第二章语音学与音系学1. The tone, defined as variation, is an important suprasegmental feature of tone languages such as ____.A. ChineseB. EnglishC. Chinese and EnglishD. English and French2. According to the places of articulation, sounds in English such as /t/, /l/ and /z/ can be labeled as ____ ones.A. dentalB. bilabialC. velar D alveolar3. Of the following sound combinations, only ____ is permissible according to the sequentla1 rules in English.A. kiblB. bkil C ilkb D. ilbk4. Of all the speech organs, the ____ is the most flexible.A lip B. mouth C. vocal cord D. tongue5. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds.A. voicelessB. voicedC. vowelD. consonantal6. ____ is a voiced alveolar stop.A . /z / B. /d / C. /k/ D. /b/7. The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by "copying" a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ____.A. identicalB. similarC. exactly alikeD. same8. Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning, they are said to be ____.A. in phonemic contrastB. in complementary distributionC. the allophonesD. minimal pair9. The sound /f/ is a ____.A. voiced palatal affricateB. voiced alveolar stopC. voiceless velar fricativeD. voiceless labiodentals fricativel0. A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position.A. backB. centralC. frontD. middle11. Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____.A. suprasegmental featuresB. immediate constituentsC. phonetic componentsD. semantic features12. A(n)____is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit, a collection of distinctive phonetic features.A. phoneB. soundC. allophoneD. phoneme13. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ____ of that phoneme.A. phonesB. soundsC. phonemesD. allophones14. Which of the following statements about allophone is NOT correctA. Allophones are different forms of the same phoneme.B. Allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution.C. Allophones distinguish meani ng·D. Allophones are language specific.15. When pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence rather than to the word, they are collectively known as ____.A. intonationB. toneC. phonemeD. sentence stress16. Which of the following is also called "semivowelsA. fricativesB. liquidsC. affricatesD. glides17. In terms of place of articulation, the two consonants /f/, /v/ are ____.A. denta1B. alveolarC. palatalD. labiodental18. In terms of manners of articulation, the sounds /p/, /b/, /t/,/d/, /k/,/g/ are ____.A. bilabialB. stopsC. affricatesD. fricatives19. What is your understanding of "the Adam’s apple”A. Part of Adam’s body.B. The front part of larynx.C. The top of larynx.D. A kind of apple.20. Which of the following is NOT a velar soundA. /k/B. /ŋ/C. /v/D./g/ 第三章形态学1. ____ is a process of combining two or more words into one lexical unit.A. DerivationB. BlendingC. AbbreviationD. Compounding2. Words such as "telex " and "workfare "are created through ____.A. blendingB. compoundingC. conversionD. affixation3. According to the morphological analysis, the underlined part in the word “internationalism” should be referred to as a ____.A. rootB. stemC. prefixD. suffix4. Which of the following words is made up of bound morphemes onlyA. Happiness.B. Television.C. Ecology.D. Teacher.5. Which of the following words is a derivativeA. Able.B. Pet.C. Dusty.D. Change.6. How many morphemes are there in the word “disarmed”A. 2.B. 3.C. 4D. 57. When "-ing" in "gangling" is removed to get a verb "gangle", we call this way of creating words ____.A. suffixingB. compoundingC. back-formationD. acronymy8. The phoneme "vision" in the common word “television” is a(n) ____.A. bound morphemeB. bound formC. inflectional morphemeD. free morpheme9. As is known ____ are often thought to be the smallest meaningful units of language.A. wordsB. sentencesC. phonemesD.morphemes10. “-s” in the word "books" is ____.A. a derivative affixB. a stemC. an inflectional affixD. a root11. The meaning carried by the inflectional morpheme is ____.A. lexicalB. morphemicC. grammaticalD. semantic12. The compound word "bookstore" is the place where books are sold. This indicates that themeaning of a compound____.A. is the sum total of the meaning of its componentsB. can always be worked out by looking at the meanings of morphemesC. is the same as the meaning of a free phraseD. none of the above13. Bound morphemes are those that ____.A. have to be used independentlyB. cannot be combined with other morphemesC. have to be combined with other morphemesD. can either be free or bound14. As one of the affixes, a prefix is ____.A. below the stemB. after the stemC. before the stemD. in the middle of the stem15. ____ is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.A. syntaxB. grammarC. morphologyD. morpheme16. Which one of the following is NOT a suffix for adjectivesA. -ous .B. -nessC. -al17. ____ modify the meaning of the stem, but usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.A. PrefixesB. SuffixesC. RootsD. Affixes18. The stem of the word “disengagements” is ____.A. engagementB. disengageC. engageD. disengagement19. Which of the following words is a derivational oneA. CocktailB. ReadsC. EstablishmentD. Kids20. ____ and ____ can constitute a compound.A. A stem, an affixB. A free morpheme, a free morphemeC. A root, an affixD. A prefix, a suffixII: Define the following terms1. langue2. parole3. competence4. performance5. synchronic study6. diachronic study7. IPA8. phonetics 229. narrow transcription10. phonology11. phoneme12. phone13. allophone14. assimilation rules15. suprasegmental features16. morpheme17. morph18. allomorph19. free morpheme20. bound morpheme21. inflectional morpheme22. derivational morpheme23 compounding24. conversion25. derivation南京师范大学联办生学士学位课程考试英语专业《英语语言学》课程考试卷I. Multiple Choice ( 20x1)Directons: You are supposed to choose the best out of the four choices and write theletter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in the TABLE.1. What are the dual structures of languageA. Sounds and letters.B. Sounds and meaningC. Letters and meaningD. Sounds and symbols.2. Which of the following is NOT a compound wordA. LandladyB. GreenhouseC. UpliftD. Unacceptable3. Which of the following statements about language is NOT trueA. Language is a system.B. Language is symbolic.C. Animals also have languageD. Language is arbitrary4. Who put forward the distinction between Langue and ParoleA. SaussureB. ChomskyC. HallidayD. Anonymous5. According to Chomsky, which is the ideal user's internalized knowledge of his languageA. competenceB. paroleC. performanceD. langue6. The study of the way listeners perceive the sounds is called ____.A. acoustic phoneticsB. auditory phoneticsC. articulatory phoneticsD. phonology7. The distinction between vowels and consonants lies in ____.A. the place of articulationB. the obstruction of airstreamC. the position of the tongueD. the shape of the lips8. Which is the branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcriptionA. Phonetics.B. Phonology.C. Semantics.D. Pragmatics.9. Which studies the sound systems in a certain languageA. PhoneticsB. PhonologyC. SemanticsD. Pragmatics10. Which studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formedA. MorphologyB. SyntaxC. PhonologyD. Semantics11. ______ does not study meaning in isolation, but in context.A. PragmaticsB. SemanticsC. Sense relationD. Concept12. ______is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of or the change brought about by the utterance.A. A locutionary actB. An illocutionary actC. A perlocutionary actD. A performative act13. Historical linguistics explores __________.A. the nature of language changeB. the causes that lead to language changeC. the relationship between languagesD. all of the above14. Language change is essentially a matter of change _____.A. in collocationsB. in meaningC. in grammarD. in usages15. The most distinguishable linguistic feature of a regional dialect is its _____.A. use of wordsB. use of structuresC. accentD. morphemes16. ______ in a person's speech or writing usually ranges on a continuum from casual or colloquial to formal or polite according to the type of communicative situation.A. Regional variationB. Changes in emotionsC. Variation in connotationsD. Stylistic variation17. Human linguistic ability largely depends on the structure and dynamics of______.A. human brainB. human vocal cordsC. human memoryD. human18. Linguistic _____ is the brain's neurological specialization for language.A. fossilizationB. performanceC. competenceD. lateralization19. In first language acquisition, imitation plays _____.A. a minor roleB. a significant roleC. a basic roleD. no rule20. In general, a good second language learner is an adolescent_____.A. who has a strong and well-defined motivation to learnB. who seeks out all chances to interact with the inputC. who is willing to identify himself with the culture of the target language communityD. all the aboveII. Define the following terms (6x5)Directions: You are supposed to write each of the following definitions in the corresponding space.1. productivity2. context3. sentence and utterance4. regional dialect and sociolect5. psycholinguistics6. interlanguageIll. Decide whether the statements are true or false (10x1)Directions: You are supposed to put your answer T (true) or F (false) for each sentence into the corresponding space in the TABLE.1. A sentence cannot be a word or a fragment in strict sense, but an utterance can be a word or a fragment of a sentence.2. A stem first of all refers to any morpheme or combination of morphemes, but an affix can be added to it.3. Every word in a language can find at least one referent in the objective world.4. In most cases, lexicon means vocabulary and is related to the analysis and creation of words, idioms and collocations.5. The use of the term 'implicature' is different from 'implication' in that it usually indicates a rather narrowly denned logical relationship between two propositions.6. The defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication are termed design features.7. There are other channels, besides language, for communicating our thoughts, so language is only one aspect of semiotics.8. Modem linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, written language as secondary.9. Descriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for 'correct' language use, ., to tell people what they should say and what should not say.10. Phonology is the branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of speech sounds and their patterns.IV. Answer the following questions (4x10).Directions: You are supposed to answer each of the following questions in the corresponding space.1. What are the possible causes of language change2. Draw a tree diagram for the following sentence to show its syntactic structure They knew that the senator would win the election.3. What is arbitrariness Illustrate it with examples4. What do you think of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Give examples or proof to support your point of view. ^。
chapter 1(1) 英语语言学,第一章
养的。”
记者将他的话公诸于
众，华盛顿的议员们一定要马
克 ·吐 温 在 报 上 登 个 启 事 ， 赔 礼
道 歉 。 于 是 ， 马 克 ·吐 温 写 了 这
样一张启事：“以前鄙人在酒席上发言，
说某些国会议员是狗娘养的，我再三考
虑，觉得此言不妥，而且不合事实，特登
报声明，把我的话修改成：
某些国会议员不是狗娘养的。
❖ ② language is arbitrary and symbolic. There is no intrinsic connection between the word and the thing. It is symbolic in that linguistic elements are symbols or signs, not objects, actions or things, but they are associated with objects or actions.
Definition of language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
① language is a system: elements in language are arranged according to rules. The elements can not be produced and combined at random. If so, language can not be used and learned consistently.
❖ A Sketch of the Course
❖ Chapter 1: general introductions to language and linguistics
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The arbitrariness of language
The arbitrariness of the symbols : there is no inherent or natural relationship between a word and its referent or what it stands for. For example, there is nothing horse-like about the word horse. The word for dog is chien in French, hund in German. Other languages use other words. It is convention, agreement among the members of a speech community, that assigns meaning to a word. In any language the relation between sounds and meaning is arbitrary. There are only a small number of words whose relation can be explained. E.g. cuckoo (English), coucou (French), Kuckuck (German), bugu (Chinese) Almost nothing about language is arbitrary in the sense that some person sat down on some occasion and decided to invent it. Virtually everything in language has a non-arbitrary origin. Some things evolve toward greater arbitrariness, other towards less. In this respect, we can say that language is both arbitrary and non-arbitrary.
Language
English is Crazy!
Have you ever wondered why foreigners have trouble with the English Language?
Let’s face it.
• English is a stupid language. • If writers write, how come fingers don't fing. There is no egg in the eggplant If the plural of tooth is teeth No ham in the hamburger Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be And neither pine nor apple in the phone beeth pineapple. If the teacher taught, English muffins were not invented Why didn't the preacher praught. in England French fries were not invented in France. • We sometimes take English for granted But if we examine its paradoxes we find that Quicksand takes you down slowly Boxing rings are square And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
Language is a set of sounds
These sounds are vocal, that is, they are produced by the human organs of speech--lips, tongue, larynx, etc. Sounds make up the raw materials of language. It is these sounds that language employs to carry its message. Other sounds --- sirens, drum beats, whistles --- also have meaning but these are not sounds produced by the human speech mechanism and therefore are not linguistic symbols.
the Tower of Babel
Result: God caused a confusion of language and the builders were unable to understand one another’s language, thus the construction of the tower was interrupted. God scattered these people, speaking different languages, over the face of the earth. The story reveals a fact that the greatest separation or estrangement between people is language.
A consolidation of the definitions of language yields the following composite definition.
Definition of Language
We can define language as a structured system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which members of a speech community communLanguage is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols. ☺ A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates. ☺ Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables What the hell does a humanitarian eat!? Why do people recite at a play Yet play at a recital? Park on driveways and Drive on parkways You have to marvel at the unique lunacy Of a language where a house can burn up as It burns down And in which you fill in a form By filling it out And a bell is only heard once it goes!
Language is a system. It is not a random collection of items. Patterning is all important. There is an underlying pattern in every language, and it is this pattern which the linguist seeks to discover when he sets out to study a language.
•
English was invented by people, not computers And it reflects the creativity of the human race (Which of course isn't a race at all) That is why When the stars are out they are visible But when the lights are out they are invisible And why it is that when I wind up my watch It starts But when I wind up this observation, It ends.
Discussion for Today
What is language? Give your own definitions.
What is the nature of human language?
What are the characteristics of English?
Briefly describe the history of the English language.
Language is human and used for human communication
Languages are alike because people have the same capacities everywhere. All infants babble---even those deaf at birth. The incredibly complex system that constitutes every known language is largely mastered before a child learns to divide ten by two. No one knows yet how far the great apes may progress in communicating with people and with other apes using human sign language, but for all their skill in using it, they did not invent it.